A five-foot tall robot will start roaming a downtown Silver Spring parking garage in coming months as part of a pilot program aiming to deter crime.
The robot, dubbed “Parker”, was the subject of discussion for some County Councilmembers during Tuesday’s meeting.
The Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) leased Parker for a year at $90,000. The County will lease the robot from security technology company Knightscope.
MCDOT Director Chris Conklin said the goal of the pilot is to “have a presence that hopefully reduces the amount of incidents we have and minimizes the amount of direct person-to-person interaction we have.”
In coming months, Parker will navigate the Ellsworth Drive public parking garage, one of the busiest county garages, Conklin said. MCDOT intends to conduct public outreach starting in August. That will include listening sessions and opportunities to meet with Parker. The County hopes to launch the program at the end of September or early October.
“Parker” on the Job
Parker records video in all directions with a 360-degree camera. But the robot does not use the camera to navigate but rather uses Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) and learns the layout of the garage. Parker can log license plate and video data but cannot identify criminal behavior or call the police. It can detect cars as they enter the garage and can sense the presence of people. But it cannot identify who those people are. There is no audio recording.
The county will get summary reports twice a day from Knightscope. Knightscope can review Parker’s footage, Conklin said, but MCDOT is sole owner of the data. Conklin said the technology has “some of the highest data security possible for these types of systems.”
If something is reported after the fact, MCDOT can review the footage to see if there is any evidence captured to share with law enforcement.
Parker also has a button to summon help, and that has been coordinated with security so they have protocol to determine if it is a 911 emergency. The robot does have lights, sirens, and a PA so announcements can be made.
The robot will be entirely serviced by Knightscope, including liabilities like theft and repair.
The Concerns
Council President Kate Stewart said the council and public was made aware about the pilot in “a bit of a surprise” by a news story in June. Parker was suspended after Councilmembers asked for the pilot to be paused to get more information.
Stewart said the council is “very concerned about making sure that everyone in our community feels safe.” She said some families do not go out anymore because they are concerned about immigration enforcement.
Councilmember Natali Fani-González said she encountered Parker when she went to the Silver Spring Civic Center for an event. She did not see the MCDOT logo and said that it needs to be big. She commented the robot was so slow that cars were backing up at one point — “I don’t have a lot of high hopes just because it’s so slow, and I just cannot see how effective it would be.”
The robot will not go into stairwells. Councilmember Andrew Friedson said, “Some of the more dangerous activities and places in parking garages are actually stairwells.” His review was not favorable, describing it as “more of a retroactive tool and a deterrence than it really is a proactive public safety tool.”
Council Vice President Will Jawando thinks there needs to be record of what is shared with law enforcement.
Councilmember Kristin Mink has concerns about the company itself. She said Knightscope also signed an agreement with a company that President Donald Trump tapped to pull together data on Americans — Palantir Technologies.
Mink shared Fani-González’s skepticism — “I am very dubious that we are going to get results that are compelling enough that we are going to say that we should roll this out, having this company looking at data, looking at images from our residents here, potentially creating additional fears for our immigrant community — adding on to what they already fear — so that we can reduce trash in the garage.”
